Nikon Coolpix S6 6.0MP Digital Camera

We’ve taken a good look at a few Coolpix models in the past, but none were like this. The S6 is as sleek as they come, and can easily fit into any pocket for transport. Does it’s small size detract from it’s image quality?

Specs, Picture Quality

The S6 has some decent capabilities, but again nothing is amazing. The lens is none other than a Zoom-Nikkor ED (5.8-17.4mm). I am unsure what ED stands for, however. Max digital zoom is 4x, and analog zoom is 3x. In addition, max aperture is f/3.0-5.4. The max image quality is JPG 2812*2112 (5,947,392 px). Video quality is also great here, with support for VGA 640*480.

Using the camera at the normal settings, I was impressed by the lush colors that the camera outputted. There are a few shortcomings though. While many of the outdoor pictures are crisp, some of them are over exposed. The lens has a fixed aperture also, which is another downside. In some of the outdoor pictures you will see below, many of them have great color, but have a lot of darker areas, whereas it was not actually as such when I took the shot. I have found that adding a +10% brightness on most of the outputted photographs helps. This could depend on your personal tastes however, and how high you have your monitors brightness to begin with.

The camera includes many modes, including most that we saw on the P3. Included was one of my favorites… the panoramic assist mode. I won’t get into it in this review, but you can read the last few paragraphs of my P4 review to see what I am talking about, and why it’s so cool.

Most of the images in the review were taken on a normal scene mode with automatic focus. However, at night time during a recent camping trip, I also took advantage of the night time portrait mode, which delivers some interesting affects. It lowers the shutter speed in conjunction with multiple flashes, which results in a little blurring, but cool output. Here is an example of this:

Other regular features are included here also, such as white balance, blur warning, best shot selector, exposure control and a self timer. As compact as the S6 is, it really does offer quite a feature set. Oh yes… it also features WiFi printer capabilities. I do not have a compatible printer however, so I was unable to give it a run.

Here are the rest of the results. All images can be clicked for their full resolution. However, only the first one uses the absolute top settings, the rest use the second highest.